All-Night Horror Marathons

October 12, 19, and 26 at Dynasty Typewriter, New Beverly Cinema, and Aero Theatre

It’s that time of the year again! Three venues are prepping for Halloween with marathons of horror films. Two of the lineups — Reels From the Crypt at the Dynasty Typewriter on October 12 and the All-Night Horror Show at the New Bev on October 19 — are secret, but we know that Reels From the Crypt will be comprised entirely of horror anthologies, all projected on 16mm. That helps narrow down the field a bit.

The Aero, meanwhile, has made its lineup public. The October 26 program features Critters, Halloween II, Ruby, Lisa and the Devil, Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker, Demonoid, and The Crazies. All are on 35mm except for Lisa and the Devil. If past policies hold true, the Aero will have a standby line going throughout the night, for people who want to get into specific films. So if you can’t do the entire marathon, consider showing up at whatever ungodly hour in which Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker plays: That movie— which tracks a woman’s unhealthy love for her high school-age nephew, for whom she acts as guardian — is absolutely insane. It’s got an all-timer performance from Susan Tyrrell and an early turn from Bill Paxton.

OLD BOYFRIENDS (1979)

dir. Joan Twekesbury

September 28 at 7:30 PM at the Aero Theatre

We mentioned Old Boyfriends when it played at the Billy Wilder back at the beginning of the year, but this presentation — on a new 35mm print — merits another mention. That’s because director Joan Tewkesbury and stars Talia Shire and Keith Carradine will be in attendance to discuss this road movie which tells the story of a psychiatrist (Shire) dealing with her own identity by reconnecting with three former flames. The new print might also be a good showcase for the score by David Shire, who was married to Talia when they made the film.

THE VAST OF NIGHT (2019)

dir. Andrew Patterson

September 30 at 3 PM at the The Huluween Theatre at the Egyptian

This free Beyond Fest screening, a new micro-budget thriller in the mold of original Twilight Zone episodes, is the debut movie from filmmaker Andrew Patterson. It follows two teens — a switchboard operator and a radio DJ — who live in a very small town in 1950s New Mexico. Despite not having the budget to visualize an extraterrestrial encounter, the director depicts the characters’ interaction with aliens via an inventive sonic palette and superb production design, not to mention a particularly well-executed mid-movie tracking shot.DCP | INFO + TICKETS

ZODIAC (2007)

dir. David Fincher

October 1-3 at 7:30 PM at the New Beverly Cinema

When it’s all said and done, Zodiac could well be David Fincher’s greatest film, as it captures the frustrations, dead-ends and psychological damage of pursuing a years-long murder investigation, with the sort of detail typically reserved for modern television productions. (In that respect, it is a stylistic prelude to Fincher’s two-season Netflix procedural Mindhunter.) The New Beverly ran two sellout matinees of Zodiac on Labor Day, so we’re happy to see it get a few more nights on the big screen.35mm | INFO + TICKETS

BOXCAR BERTHA (1972)

dir. Martin Scorsese

October 2 at 9:00 PM at the Alamo Drafthouse DTLA

Martin Scorsese’s second dramatic feature is a Roger Corman production with Barbara Hershey and David Carradine (yep, we’re going for two Carradine pictures this week) starring as a doomed criminal couple in the Depression-era South. What might have been an exploitative knock-off of Bonnie and Clyde becomes something more, thanks to Scorsese’s intuitive understanding of character and tone. It doesn’t always look and feel like the movies the director would make soon after, but one could argue that he might not have pulled off Mean Streets two years later without going through the Corman school of down-and-dirty filmmaking.

THE OUTLAW (1943/1946)

dir. Howard Hughes & Howard Hawks (uncredited)

October 5 at 1:30 PM at the Autry Museum of the American West

A FISH CALLED WANDA (1988) / FIERCE CREATURES (1997)

dir. Charles Crichton / Fred Schepisi, Robert Young

October 6 at 7:30 PM at the Aero Theatre

The Aero celebrates the 50th anniversary of Monty Python with a short series of screenings, including this “Python-adjacent” double bill. A Fish Called Wanda is more like an updated Ealing Studios comedy than a Python film — that’s because it is the final movie from director Charles Crichton, who made formative British comedies like Hue and Cry and The Lavender Hill Mob at the legendary London studio. Crichton developed the film with John Cleese, who wrote the script as his first solo screenwriting effort, although by all accounts Cleese was extraordinarily open to input from cast and crew. Regardless, we’re really pointing out this screening because Kevin Kline’s performance as a dumb and terminally insecure con man (which won him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar) is too good to pass up. Plays with a Blu-ray presentation of the serviceable but inferior spiritual sequel, Fierce Creatures.